The Annointed Fig

I remember 9/11.

Fly United!

I was ready to step out to go to school / work — I was in grad school, and it was my first semester as a TA.  Insert me all being puffed up and leave it at that.

But my inner glow dimmed that day.  The statistic I kept hearing looping over and over on CNN and the briny smell of tears can do that to a person.

I hadn’t known tears had a briny smell, though it stands to reason, considering the chemical makeup.

And I hadn’t known that though I was never much of a jet-setter, flying the friendly skies until then had been a given, like sweets.  Still is, despite the belief both having been shaken and stirred.  I might not want to have a cake (or rather I won’t, because in watching my figure, I’m going to get others to follow suit — and yet stave off the attentions of any, even the cutest one, doctor in his / her professional capacity).  But the thing is, I COULD eat it.

Same with my reliance on aviation.  It’s there, and a child of the late 2oth century that I am, I expect it to get me where I want to go.  Or desperately need to.

Unfortunately, just as I had been in for a rude personal awakening 8 years ago, a young woman in San Francisco had her own (or had it reinforced) by United Airlines employees.

This girl’s mother had lived in Portland, Oregon, and just prior to an enviable display of humanity on the part of the ticketing agent, Mike, the girl’s boyfriend, received a call from her father asking the couple to fly in.  The girl’s mother had been close to death.

Now, in the situation like that, who wouldn’t actually do everything they could to help?  Certainly, the fellow passengers had — letting them get in to the front of the queue, no questions asked.

Not so the agent.  Though Mike and his girlfriend had their reservation numbers and explained their situation, the agent looked them in the eye and said that regardless of them trying to make the flight, she was going on break, sorry.  She had no choice, she said, and hadn’t even bent whatever rules she might have been in violation of to call the gate agent and ask him to wait for the couple.

Long and short of it, they didn’t make that flight, though when they ran up to the gate, the plane was still there and the gate agent was busy turning away the stragglers, including those that just stepped off a connecting flight that had arrived late.  The gate agent even excused the fellow ticketing agent.  “The management makes us work some unreasonable schedules.”  Ah, OK, AND?

By the time they got to Portland on the next flight, departed two and a half hours later, it hadn’t been too late, but the young woman’s mother did pass away a very short time after.  And certainly, those hours probably wouldn’t have done anything.  But they would have been there.  And sometimes, it is the most important thing in the world.

I don’t wish anyone at the United Airlines to experience for themselves what that young woman had been going through just so that they can be a tad more empathetic next time, but I would very much hope its upper management sees fit to give its employees some much needed customer service training.

What the 9/11 had done was make the very act of taking to the skies a roll of the dice.  What this incident has added to it, is that you don’t need terrorists to make you feel alone.  And yes, betrayed.  Kudos to the corporate culture!

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